5 Best memorization techniques for college students

By Swati Mittal

The most dreaded phase in the student's life is the phase of examinations that comes every few months or so in our lives. Be it high school or college, examinations follow us everywhere. They are the test of our capabilities, an assessment of how much we have learned and gained from our lectures and classes. But the truth be told, given the current examination pattern in our educational system most students sit down to study at the last hour i.e. a few days before the examination season is to start. Before that, it's all a fun period for the majority of students. But when you are not in the habit of regular studies cramming up things at the last hour can be quite difficult. There is only so much that your brain can cram up in a limited period of time. Thus, to help you out of your crises we have compiled a list of some of the most effective learning and memorizing techniques for students. These tips and tricks will come in quite handy for students during the examination time.

Pay Attention and Listen Carefully

You might have noticed there are some people in your class who just listen to lectures carefully and end up memorizing things there and then. It's not they are some super humans or possess some special powers. They are simply people who are good at memorizing things by listing to them. It's quite simple to test if you, yourself are an auditory learner. Just record your notes in your voice and listen to them. If you do not like listening to your own voice have a friend or your sibling record them in their voice and then listen to them. Once you feel you have memorized the concepts well, test yourself to check how much of it did you retain.

Rewrite the Material

Another popular way to memorize your syllabus is to rewrite the material available to you. When you sit down to memorize the material as it is in the textbooks or reference books, you tend to get confused or fail to remember the long difficult phrases. A very easy trick to memorize such material is to rewrite it in your own terms. Because, when you are rewriting any concept in your own language you process the information at multiple steps in your mind at once. As you'd first need to understand the concept and then break it down in your own terms and finally write it. When you are investing so much time and concentration you are bound to remember the concept with more clarity.

Visualize

A lot of people are visual learners. For them, one of the best memorizing technique is to form visuals of the content they are looking to memorize. Using visual methods like diagrams, color coding or creating images for various concepts. You can also build various visual cues for different concepts like visualize history events in a story format by replacing the historical characters with your friends in your mind.

Balance Workload

When you sit down to memorize a lot of content at the same time, you usually end up mixing things leading to confusion. Thus wasting your hours of effort as you would yield no result in the end. Instead of cramming things up in one long study session break your study load in small time amounts and devote specified time to each and every concept. Like if you are a student of psychology and you are studying the concept of the sleep cycle. Then, in that case, break your chapter into various small topics and memorize each one before moving on to the next.

Flashcards are a great memorization technique but you need to take care while creating them. For if not created in the correct manner their purpose is defeated. When creating the cards you have to be careful not to write down entire paragraphs on the card. But only focusing on keywords and main concepts. Try to be as concise as possible when mentioning a concept on the card. Flashcards as best used as cues to trigger your memory for remembering the concept. The trick for making flashcards is that you should be able to view the entire information mentioned on the card in a single glance or as the name goes, in a single flash.

Are you in the habit of repeatedly reading through your notes in hopes that over time your brain will familiarize with the content and cram it up? But most often than not, you forget important bits of information during tests then maybe it is time to reconsider your learning methods. Not everyone's brain is wired the same way. Some technique that works for your friend might not work for you. Go through the methods mentioned above. Try each one of them and figure out which one works the best for you and then continue with it.

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